Halo Wars (Xbox 360)
This is the way Ensemble ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
2/23/2009 6:23 PM | 12 Comments | Page 1 of 4
What's Hot: Great Halo feel; Good asymmetry between the two sides; Decent interface
What's Not: Interface falls apart at important points; Bad pathing AI; Would play better on a PC
This is a review I don't want to write. The
closing of Ensemble Studios was a great loss for fans of real-time strategy games, and the developer has given me some of my favorites in the genre. Ensemble's
Age of Empires III is a grand accomplishment that I'll still be playing years from now. So I had hoped its final game,
Halo Wars, would be a supernova RTS achievement. It's not. It's yet another attempt to shove a PC-shaped RTS into a console-shaped hole. This is the way Ensemble ends: not with a bang but a whimper.
It wouldn't be a Halo game without expensive-looking cut scenes.
There's a lot of really nice Halo atmosphere here, from the familiar green-and-purple aesthetic to cut scenes with high production values. The storyline, a prequel to the shooters, hits all the usual Halo beats: Covenant, then Flood, then super Precursor weapon with automated defenses, then a bomb, and then a big explosion, and then a sappy ending. The writing isn't very good, and the only memorable character is the ship's sassy AI, who's sort of like Cortana with an attitude glitch. But even though the single-player campaign is your typical dull, scripted stuff that only lets you play as the space marines, it has a few memorable set pieces. I'd even go so far as to say it's got a lot of replayability, thanks to Ensemble's clever adaptation of
Halo 3's co-op gameplay and secret skull system.
As a multiplayer game, there's clever asymmetry between the humans and the aliens, but in a post-
StarCraft world, it's hard to shake the feeling that two sides is at least one side too few. It's a shame the Flood and the Halo defenses aren't playable, although they are built into a couple of the multiplayer maps. The skirmish artificial intelligence is pretty good, varying its tactics and using special abilities sensibly. But as a multiplayer game, I have to wonder what sort of community this game will have. I'm not convinced there's a large audience for
Halo Wars. The Halo name will be a huge draw, but will Halo fans want to play a console RTS? Will they be as dedicated to this as they are their beloved shooter? Or will this dwindle to a small community of hardcore players? Time will tell.
Lean mean RTS machine
Green vs. purple
If there's one word you could apply to
Halo Wars, it's streamlined. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the streamlining helps make it manageable. The units are mostly broad strokes, with no more than 10 per side. The economy is simple and hands-off. The base-building is focused on pre-set nodes on the maps. The tactical AI is expected to take care of most of the basics during a battle. There aren't any numbers to fuss with in terms of unit damage, hit points, upgrades and so on.
But this is still very much an RTS in the PC tradition. It's based on drag-selecting units without drag-selecting, moving around the map quickly without being able to use the mini-map, and pinpoint-clicking without a pinpoint-accuracy pointer. In other words, the curse of mouse-less real-time strategy gaming. Here you won't find any
EndWar-style flash of genius or
Pikmin-esque revolution.
Halo Wars simply does what most other RTSes in the same situation do: shrugs and tries to make the best of it.
